A fascinating paper by neuroscientists Van Horn and Gazzaniga chronicles their pioneering, but not entirely successful, attempt to get researchers sharing their brain scans: Why share data? Lessons learned from the fMRIDC.
It all started in 1999 when, along with some colleagues, they decided that the time was right for data sharing in neuroimaging. They got some public funding, and tried to get various major neuroscience journals to require that anyone publishing an fMRI study should make their data available to the fMRI Data Consortium (fMRIDC).
By making it mandatory, they'd ensure that there was no selection bias. Requirements to post raw data were already common in other fields of science like genetics and crystallography. So, they thought, why can't it happen here?
However, it didn't go down very well:
Upon becoming aware of our efforts and goals, fMRI researchers angered by journal requirements to provide copies of the fMRI ...
